alaskarenewableenergy.orghttp://alaskarenewableenergy.org
Tue, 03 Mar 2015 00:26:57 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.3Alaska Harnesses Power of Tides, Rivers, and Waveshttp://alaskarenewableenergy.org/alaska-harnesses-power-of-tides-rivers-and-waves/
http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/alaska-harnesses-power-of-tides-rivers-and-waves/#commentsFri, 11 Jul 2014 18:48:42 +0000http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/?p=12414By Joaquin Palomino | Alaska Public Radio Network: Engineers have tried to harness the power of pounding waves and shifting tides for generations, but only recently has the goal been attainable. With 90 percent of the nation’s tidal power, and a good chunk of its wave and river energy, Alaska’s quickly become the epicenter for this budding technology.

“We are clearly the ocean energy, hydrokinetic energy leader in America,” says Doug Johnson, director of business at the Ocean Renewable Power Company. Johnson is overseeing four hydrokinetic projects this summer, from False Pass in the Aleutians to Yakutat in south-east Alaska. One project, along the Kvichak River near the town of Igiugig, could provide about half of the energy needs for the 50-person community

“If it’s successful you could literally turn the diesel off and use diesel as back-up power,” Johnson says. “It’s just a really excellent way to provide energy to the community. There’s no emissions and there’s really no negative impacts that we’ve seen so far of these devices in the water.”

Despite its technical name, hydrokinetic power is pretty straightforward. It’s basically just a turbine placed in water. As the current or wave moves it, electricity is made. Like any new invention hydrokinetic power is pretty expensive. But in rural Alaska where people pay a premium for energy, it could still pencil out.

]]>http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/alaska-harnesses-power-of-tides-rivers-and-waves/feed/0Energy efficiency becomes hot market for tech companieshttp://alaskarenewableenergy.org/energy-efficiency-becomes-hot-market-for-tech-companies/
http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/energy-efficiency-becomes-hot-market-for-tech-companies/#commentsTue, 08 Jul 2014 17:20:07 +0000http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/?p=12404By Evan Halper | The Seattle Times: WASHINGTON — As President Obama pushes ahead on a strategy to confront climate change that relies heavily on energy efficiency, some Americans may see flashbacks of Jimmy Carter trying to persuade them to wear an extra sweater and turn down the thermostat.

The technology world sees dollar signs.

Long overshadowed by wind turbines, solar panels and other fashionable machines of renewable power, energy efficiency has lately become a hot pursuit for tech entrepreneurs, big-data enthusiasts and Wall Street speculators.

They have leveraged multibillion-dollar programs in several states, led by California and Massachusetts, to cultivate a booming industry. This onetime realm of scolds, do-gooders and bureaucrats has become the stuff of TED talks, IPOs and spirited privacy debates.

“This is not about extra sweaters anymore,” said Jon Wellinghoff, a San Francisco lawyer who formerly chaired the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Power companies are tapping databases to profile intensely the energy use of their customers, the way that firms like Target track customer product choices.

Google spent $3.2 billion this year to buy Nest Labs, a company that makes thermostats that resemble iPhones and are designed to intuit the needs of their owners. Energy regulators are providing seed capital to startups building such things as waterless laundry machines.

Effective July 1, Enstar customers will see their average monthly bill increase by 48.5 percent, according to John Sims, Enstar’s director of business development.That’s a jump of $39.97 for the average residential customer.

Enstar said the increase is mainly due to a carry-over from the second quarter of 2014 – April to June – when it overestimated the amount of gas its customers would use.

Enstar, which serves more than 137,000 customers (residential and commercial) from Homer to the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, buys natural gas from several producers, including ConocoPhillips, Buccaneer Energy, Cook Inlet Energy and Hilcorp. Each contract has different terms, Enstar said, but in general, the more gas it buys, the cheaper it is.

In part because of an unusually warm Southcentral spring, Enstar’s customers used far less natural gas than the utility had budgeted for. That meant Enstar had to pay considerably more for the gas it used in the second quarter. The extra cost — 32 cents per 100 cubic feet of natural gas used – is being passed on to customers.

But Enstar said it won’t be making a profit on the increase. As a regulated gas utility in Alaska, Enstar is prohibited from making money on the cost of the natural gas it sends to its customers, instead making its profits from the delivery of that gas.

The 1,400 page report, commissioned by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation and authored by the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks, provides a detailed assessment of housing at the state, regional and community level. It analyzed information from the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey, as well as professional energy audits conducted on about 30 percent of Alaska’s occupied housing.

The data underscore statewide trends: housing costs more than people can comfortably afford, in part because of high energy costs, especially in rural Alaska. This trend is not new in rural Alaska, but it has become a growing problem in urban areas. The report also looked at overcrowding, which is twice the national average overall, and in some places reported to be more than 12 times the national average.

In an interview, Bryan Butcher, the CEO and executive director of Alaska Housing, said the housing assessment is meant to serve as a snapshot of what housing in Alaska looks like today, rather than a complete report.

Some of the report’s key findings include:

• More than 15,000 homes in Alaska are overcrowded or severely overcrowded, and the rate of overcrowding (6 percent) is twice the national average (3.1 percent).

• More than 75,000 households are cost-burdened (spending more than 30 percent of total income on housing costs).That number is likely higher if factoring in energy cost estimates from the housing authority’s database.

The city-owned electric company is raising Blue Lake Dam by 83 feet and adding three new turbines in a bid to keep its power local, clean and separate from the fluctuating cost of diesel. So far, that hydropower project appears to be on schedule.

Increases in some costs have been offset by decreases in others, project leaders say.

Though they’ve sought federal state, and other funding — everything including “a coin collection in the office,” utility director Christopher Brewton joked during a recent tour — the project is still $18.6 million short.

They met with the Alaska Energy Authority early last week to seek a loan; if they don’t receive it, that money will be raised through bonding, which will fund the project but will be more expensive for Sitka residents.

The visit went well and the loan is looking promising, said project engineer Dean Orbison.

Regardless of where the money comes from, raising the dam is a project Brewton and others say will pay for itself in the long run: Sitka’s diesel generators need 24,000 gallons of fuel each day. A hydroelectric turbine, in contrast, uses 387 million gallons of water, he said.

Though that sounds like a lot of water, it’s the equivalent of only a quarter-inch of rain.

But with supply, comes demand, and before long communities like Wrangell, Sitka and even Juneau found themselves turning to other renewable energy sources to make sure strained hydropower demands could be met.

One of the most popular sources to come along is the air source heat pump. With its fan-intake system and square box shape, it looks like an air conditioner — which it can be — but its primary function is to use a reverse refrigeration system that sucks heat from outside air and “steps” it up with electricity, providing an affordable alternative to heating homes with fuel oil.

The air need not be warm for the machines to work. Studies have shown that heat pumps are capable of working at temperatures as low as minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s been a big change in the market, according to Colin Craven, building science research director at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks. He said it was long thought that air source heat pumps couldn’t heat homes in the cold climates of Alaska.

]]>http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/air-source-heat-pumps-provide-energy-relief-for-southeast-alaska/feed/0Patent Medicine: Tesla makes its technology available to everyone, for free, in bold move for the planethttp://alaskarenewableenergy.org/patent-medicine-tesla-makes-its-technology-available-to-everyone-for-free-in-bold-move-for-the-planet/
http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/patent-medicine-tesla-makes-its-technology-available-to-everyone-for-free-in-bold-move-for-the-planet/#commentsTue, 17 Jun 2014 00:23:58 +0000http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/?p=12335By Mark Rogowsky | Forbes: Noting that the global auto market is approaching 100 million vehicles annually and that, “It is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis,” CEO Elon Musk announced today that the automaker is making all of its patents freely available on a good-faith basis. In a blog post on Tesla’s website, the company said it originally feared others would copy its technology, so it was aggressive in protecting intellectual property. But the way things have played out, automakers are making barely any zero-emission vehicles at all, typically less than 1% of their total production. Tesla hopes this move will begin to change that.

Musk held a conference call to discuss the move in more detail, and he clarified the company’s intentions: Tesla doesn’t believe this will change things overnight. And he’s right. Automakers take years to get new vehicles to market and longer still to ramp up production. Nissan’s Leaf, the leading EV in the world, which costs a fraction of the Tesla Model S only recently cracked the 100,000 sold mark after more than 3 years. Outside of Tesla, no pure zero-emission vehicle has achieved anywhere near those sales. But in a world with 2 billion vehicles, it’s a drop in the bucket.

]]>http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/patent-medicine-tesla-makes-its-technology-available-to-everyone-for-free-in-bold-move-for-the-planet/feed/0Tiny Alaska village hopes to cut energy costs with experimental river powerhttp://alaskarenewableenergy.org/tiny-alaska-village-hopes-to-cut-energy-costs-with-experimental-river-power/
http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/tiny-alaska-village-hopes-to-cut-energy-costs-with-experimental-river-power/#commentsMon, 16 Jun 2014 22:17:11 +0000http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/?p=12333By Suzanna Caldwell | Alaska Dispatch: In Yup’ik, the word “igiugig” means “like a throat that swallows water,” so it’s more than fitting that the village of the same name would be the test ground for one of Alaska’s first river-powered electrical generators.

The Ocean Renewable Power Co. is getting ready to put its RivGen Power System generator in the water outside the village in early July. The generator is powered by the Kvichak River, taking the river’s current and producing renewable energy for the tiny Southwest village of 70 people.

Marsh Creek contractors recently finished building the machine, which looks like a giant underwater wheat thresher. Last month, it was getting prepped to be trucked to Homer, where it will be placed on a barge for shipment to Bristol Bay and then floated up the Kvichak River to its permanent location outside the village.

Igiugig is an ideal test location for such a device, according to Chris Sauer, president and CEO of ORPC. The village is close to the headwaters of the river at Lake Iliamna. That means the water is clear, without extra sediment, and there’s less chance that big debris — like logs — will come through and clog the system.

Sauer said the unit should be able to run for about five years before it needs to come out of the water for a routine evaluation. The company is working on a plan to create a debris-diversion system and a coating to protect the generator’s blades from being worn down by silt that might be an issue in more extreme environments.

]]>http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/tiny-alaska-village-hopes-to-cut-energy-costs-with-experimental-river-power/feed/0Fairbanks students light up the town at UAF science academyhttp://alaskarenewableenergy.org/fairbanks-students-light-up-the-town-at-uaf-science-academy/
http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/fairbanks-students-light-up-the-town-at-uaf-science-academy/#commentsThu, 12 Jun 2014 20:20:24 +0000http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/?p=12331By Weston Morrow | Fairbanks Daily News Miner: FAIRBANKS — A single bicycle doesn’t typically produce much energy on its own, but in a small University of Alaska Fairbanks lab Wednesday it was enough to light up an entire city.

Granted, the city was only about six square feet and consisted mostly of model houses, model cars and a miniature Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Despite its small size, the model city presented many challenges similar to an actual city power grid.

The city was created by father and son Charles and Brandon Olszewski as a hands-on representation of the way a city’s actual power grid works. Charles, the engineer, and Brandon, the science teacher, are acting as co-instructors for “The Physics of Extreme Energy,” a two-week course that immerses middle school students in the world of energy-generation through a series of field trips and hands-on activities.

The course accepts about 10 total students going into seventh, eighth and ninth grade. The small class size allows the instructors to give individual attention to each student on a regular basis.

]]>http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/fairbanks-students-light-up-the-town-at-uaf-science-academy/feed/0Buffett Ready to Double $15 Billion Solar, Wind Bethttp://alaskarenewableenergy.org/buffett-ready-to-double-15-billion-solar-wind-bet/
http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/buffett-ready-to-double-15-billion-solar-wind-bet/#commentsTue, 10 Jun 2014 19:38:37 +0000http://alaskarenewableenergy.org/?p=12321By Noah Buhayar & Jim Polson | Bloomberg Businessweek: Warren Buffett briefly lost track of how many billions of dollars his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (A:US) is spending to build wind and solar power in the U.S. That didn’t stop him from vowing to double the outlay.

Describing the company’s increasing investment in renewable energy at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual convention in Las Vegas yesterday, Buffett had to rely on a deputy, Greg Abel, to remind him just how much they’d committed: $15 billion.

Without missing a beat, Buffett responded: “There’s another $15 billion ready to go, as far as I’m concerned.”

Such bold remarks are common for the Berkshire chairman and chief executive officer. He frequently talks about hunting for “elephant”-size acquisitions (A:US)and making multibillion-dollar stock purchases.

Still, the comment speaks to the kinds of investments that are increasingly appealing to the billionaire now that his Omaha, Nebraska-based company is the fifth-largest in the world by market value. With dozens of units spinning off cash, Buffett has been allocating funds to regulated, capital-intensive businesses such as railroad BNSF and power companies.

“Buffett has always steered Berkshire toward the future,” said Lawrence Cunningham, a professor at George Washington University and author of the forthcoming book “Berkshire Beyond Buffett.” “Lately, that has meant intensifying the company’s focus on rudimentary, long-lasting businesses.”